Production process in which its output is individually countable, or identifiable by serial numbers, and is measurable in distinct units rather than by weight or volume.

Businessdictionary access 2018-10-24 [Businessdictionary]

Discrete manufacturing is often characterized by individual or separate unit production. Units can be produced in low volume with very high complexity or high volumes of low complexity. The processes deployed in discrete manufacturing are not continuous in nature. Each process can be individually started or stopped and can be run at varying production rates.

Cheng, Xue, Wang, Zeng, & Yu. (2017). Discrete manufacturing ontology development. Industrial Technology (ICIT), 2017 IEEE International Conference on, 1393-1396. [IEEE explorer]